A steep decline in bar exam scores on the most recent test has led to an outbreak of finger-pointing over who’s to blame for the downward swing.

In a sharply worded letter, the dean of Brooklyn Law School on Monday reproached the head of a national bar exam group for suggesting to law school leaders that their graduates who took the July exam were less prepared than students who sat for the test in previous years. Read More »

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The number of students taking the LSAT and applying to law school has been in a free fall since 2010. But the mood inside law school admissions offices may be brightening, according to a new survey.

About 46% of American Bar Association-accredited law schools expect to see an increase in applications for the 2015-2016 cycle, according to Kaplan Test Prep’s latest annual survey of admissions officers. A year ago, only 34% of schools polled by Kaplan predicted a larger pool of applications for the year ahead. Read More »

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Paul Caron, author of the TaxProf Blog, described the downward trend this way: “Law School Carnage Enters Its Fifth Year.”

“Carnage” is good word for it. The number of Law School Admission Test takers in June and October of 2014 (52,826) plummeted by more than 43% from the same periods in 2009. As you can see, test takers in 2014-2015 are on pace to reach lows that we haven’t seen since the late 1990s. Read More »

It’s not an easy time to be a lawyer. But if you’re a mid-career employee who graduated from an elite law school, your degree is probably paying off.

A new ranking of U.S. graduate school earnings found that people who get a degree from Harvard Law School or other top law schools command the highest salaries by the midpoint in their careers. Read More »

New York is debating whether to replace its bar exam with a national administered and graded standardized test — a switch that could happen as early as next summer — that could make it easier for young lawyers to move in and out of New York without having to take another grueling test. Read More »

Harvard University officials and dozens of its law professors are locked in a standoff over the university’s new sexual misconduct policy after the administration rejected their demands that the school retract it.

The administration said in a statement that it disagrees with the 28 members of the law school faculty who signed a statement this week condemning a policy that the scholars say lacks “the most basic elements of fairness and due process” protections for students accused by other students of rape or sexual assault. Read More »

In yet another sign of the pressures facing law schools, Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School—which is among the largest in the country by number of students—is shutting down its campus in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The move follows the announcement this summer that Cooley planned to halt first-year enrollment at Ann Arbor, the smallest of its five campuses. The school also said it would cut faculty and staff as part of a financial management plan intended to slash expenses and “right size the organization.” Read More »

About Law Blog

The Law Blog covers the legal arena’s hot cases, emerging trends and big personalities. It’s brought to you by lead writer Jacob Gershman with contributions from across The Wall Street Journal’s staff. Jacob comes here after more than half a decade covering the bare-knuckle politics of New York State. His inside-the-room reporting left him steeped in legal and regulatory issues that continue to grab headlines.

Must Reads

Plaintiffs' lawyers dodged a bullet last year when the U.S. Supreme Court spared a quarter-century-old precedent that had served as the legal linchpin of the modern investor class-action case. Despite that win, a new report suggests that securities class actions have lost some of their firepower.

In a week in which images of Prophet Muhammad were connected to acts of terror and defiant expressions of freedom, a sculpture of the prophet of Islam inside the U.S. Supreme Court has drawn little notice.

The salacious allegations against Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz that surfaced in a federal lawsuit involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have generated international attention. Drawing less coverage is the lawsuit itself -- a case with the potential to expand the rights of crime victims during federal investigations.